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There are obviously many reasons, but there's one that's sticking out as the primary root cause of players leaving PS2 in 2014: Developers has a propensity to 'fix' things that aren't even broken as a result breaking it themselves.

Before the buff, the snipers were fine for as long as I can remember. It had 2 advantages: stealth + long range hit + but they cannot one-hit headshot all.

After the buff, the snipers has 3 advantages: stealth + long range + instant headshot kill. Downside? Nothing. It doesn't need to be close to kill so what's the downside? The best way to balance this is not through death cam, but to remove their ability to stealth. Stealthers are for CQC infiltrators.

2) Liberator buff - Just because there was Lib update, the Liberators were given huge, gamebreaking buffs.Effect: They destroyed all spawns and farmed everything.

The liberator was in equilibrium with PS2 gameplay since their AOE nerf. They were buffed for absolutely no reason. It was so bad that I didn't log on to PS2 for 3 months after a single destruction of my Sunderer spawn on the first day of the Lib update. I'm a Sunderer spawn specialist, I knew it was that horrible.

The Alert meta was fine. They didnt' need to add this to invalidate the alert and give dual, conflicting objectives. This is aside from it disrupting the flow by rewarding caps of empty bases.

Back in Waterson, the VS would ignore the alerts that caused so much upheaval to the VS populace who hate losing. It's funny seeing them rage at us when we have 40%+ population on an alert, all to be shutdown when you point out they got 50%+ on the other continents ghost capping it.

When the VS narrowly lost WDS Preseason 2 to us NC, it was double blackeye to them because they lost the WDS and a lot of prime time alerts. These players packed their bags and move to Mattherson and Connery. Hence, that's why NC got so much population advantage after WDS Preseason 2 ended.

4) Quartz Ridge remake - The Quartz ridge was fully remade.Effect: The grand flow between these suite of bases along these lanes were disrupted and broken.

Quartz Ridge + Indar Excavation + Coramed is an example of a suite of bases that almost act as a complex. If a faction takes all three, this faction moves on to the next suite. In this case the Dahaka complex or the Hvar complex. They introduced this base that ruined the suite and the flow is broken. Nowadays you very rarely see a faction move forward after taking Quartz Ridge. That middle road bisecting the whole base on the old Quartz Ridge alone helped facilitate the flow. Today, the whole vehicle swarm breaks up when this base is attacked and has to be remade again to move forward. Yeah, nobody bothers anymore especially towards Hvar.

Solution: Bring back the old Quartz Ridge and move this New Quartz Ridge close to the Seabed Listening Post lane and form a new suite of bases there.

5) New, extra lattice connections in Indar - The devs introduce new connections to a nearly perfect Indar Lattice lanes.Effect: Zergs avoid fights and the sustained battles for a bases are gone since it is easy to circumvent chokepoints. Therefore, it is hard to find good, sustained fights in Indar anymore.

It's called Indarside for a reason. It's the quintessential continent. These new connections they added (ex: Quartz Ridge - Indar Comm, Regent Rock to NS, etc. are messing the battle flow in Indar.

The current meta in Indar Emerald is:
1) Who zergs/stack harder will win the base.
2) Who steals the undefended base will win.
Why? They introduced so many new connections that many bases will be undefended and that's where the Redeployside zerg goes. This is particularly true with the VS Emerald. They look for the undefended base, redeploy and rush to it en masse. If defenders notice and redeploy in time, these guys will disappear only to find the new vulnerable base. Rinse and repeat. And that's why alot of VS players are starting to lose faith with their leadership. NC Emerald has caught up with this lame strategy with a wack-a-mole counters. Redeployside intensifies.

Solution: Remove many of these new lanes you created especially the Quartz Ridge to Indar Comm, Regent Rock to NS,
and even the Ceres to Ti Alloys.

Indar was fine and a model for other continents. So why fiddle and ruin it? I've been arguing for the longest time, that it's the new Amerish lanes that need opening up since the major chokepoints are too close to each other. Instead, they opt to change the Indar Lanes that are already that great.

How are these 5 instances of blunders possible? The developers don't even play their game.
1) The devs don't know what to fix or not to fix since they lack personal gameplay connection to PS2.
2) They can poorly predict what are the effects of the changes they are making, since they can shallowly relate to the current in-game metas.
3) The devs overly rely on graphs and charts that doesn't paint the complete picture. (I'm sure that's how they arrived at the lane changes).
4) The devs are slow to respond because listening to and reading feedback is one thing, while understanding the implications and nuances of PS2 gameplay is another.

If one is to look at their latest PPA balancing fix, you'll realize how out of touch the devs are. It's akin to when they proposed rolling out damage buff to mines as a counter to the harassers (spoiler: mines don't even hit the fast Harassers in the first place ). They simply look at their graphs and say 'oh look mines vs harassers are low. Buff the mine damage! See what I mean when graphs don't paint the complete picture?

It's a perfect AI weaponry with no downside whatsoever. Their proposed "nerf" is to kill that ammo pool. This thing has been killing Hossinside with Magriders at every hill blasting buildings, chokepoints and spawn rooms.

Without the Lib buff, the sniper buff and even the WDS preseason 2, one can argue that Planetside 2 population would have continued to grow as it had early this year. Instead, the population skydived and they were forced to merge Waterson and Mattherson.

Now that Lib nightmare has finally been fixed, hossin released and PS2 running regular events and promos, population hopefully will rise again.

Finally, PS2 Devs, please stop fixing stuff that's not even broken. If the developers are really so averse to playing their own game, then at the very least don't make impromptu changes that the community has no opportunity criticize.

Post every minutiae of details of the changes they are going to make so it can pounded and pulverized with constructive criticism before it can make it to even to the PTS or worse Live servers. It it makes it out of PTS alive, at least the probability of it being completely broken and disruptive to PS2 ecosystem will be minimized.
Stares at Valkyrie, Air Harasser 2.0....(hint: this vehicle needs sufficient downsides)

I've always liked Mordelicius's posts because they were well written, organized, and made actual points. Plus they have color. Even more impressive, is that I agree with all of it.

1) Snipers were fine before the OHK range buff. Still hate them regardless of what they get or take away.

2) Libs are perfect how they are now imo. They still have the survivability to do their thing yet are easily taken down with the right amount of force. Dalton splash radius I'm still trying to adjust to.

3) WDS I never cared for other than free XP boosters. Pointless.

4) Oh my god, Quartz sucks now please change it. In fact, I find myself avoiding that base at all costs. I just don't like the feel of it. It's like a light assault haven there now.

5) Lane wise I really can't comment on because I lack the sufficient knowledge on that because after a good fight I usually check my map and find where the next big fight is which can be anywhere, any continent.

1.) What buff are you talking about? Snipers could always one shot head shot people as far as I'm aware that sniper change they did in fact limited the range at which they could do that to people depending on the rifle

2.) I will agree with you on this one, that liberator buff was absolutely hell to play through but it's largely been fixed now and I'd almost say the lib has been overnerfed because of those three months.

3.) People actually cared about this?

4.) What your describing with vehicle zergs disintegrating here happened before the remake too. That's just quartz and it always will be as long as those chokes in front of the gates remain.

5.) I don't notice this one at all honestly. On Connery there are almost never big fights not happening for at least an hour or so on Indar. People are excited to fight each other not run away from one another because at the end of the day all people care about is how many certs they're getting.

And about your stab at the Dev's; perhaps I'm just a fanboy but I doubt anyone here understands the whole process the PS2 team goes through when they decide to balance something. Graphs and hard data certainly have a big role in it but they have also done a wonderful job of talking with the community. Do the changes we want always get through? No but at least they're not mysterious codemonkeys hidden behind bricks walls that we can only assume exist.

And lastly the PPA bit. I will agree that compared to the other two ES equivalents the PPA is downright broken. On it's own I think it could do with a slight nerf, magazine size getting obliterated is a great start and perhaps maximum ammo pool. Nerf it too much and no one will bother to use it and you'll be in the same situation that NC and TR face right now. Rather a small to moderate nerf to the PPA and a rework of the Canister and Marauder would do everyone better I think.

1. Definitely agree snipers are just an annoyance right now, you can NEVER stand still as you'll instantly die, even when running to bases you'll find yourself head shot with nothing you can do to prevent it. And its even worse for TR/NC as the VS have the best starting sniper rifle so you see SO many of them, I hardly ever see infs as NC and can't honestly remember the last time I died to a TR sniper, but VS.. about half my deaths are to VS snipers since this buff.

2. The main problem I have with libs is the amount of power they have compared to the lack of teamwork they require, get 3 people and you can slaughter huge numbers of people with almost no effort, the only way to deal with them is to pull 3 skyguards and hope the lib pilot is a idiot, in which case they'll be sitting still farming at a very low altitude, smart ones however keep moving at the sky ceiling so you can hardly hit them and they get away easily while still bombarding an area. Basically the only counter to air is air right now as skyguards shots scatter way to much at extreme range.

3. Anything that makes population imbalance worse doesn't even need explaining as to why its bad...

4. They just seem bad at designing bases in general, they've got combined arms but most bases tanks get trapped outside doing nothing, those where they can help its a flat open area where they easily farm people.. theres no middle ground it seems.

5. As for lattices, I like being able to sneak behind a enemy BUT it shouldn't be too easy as it does make zerging very easy. Its a tough balancing act but honestly I think they should do anything that counters zergs first and foremost as its the main thing that makes the game un-fun. Theres nothing worse than fighting a ppa zerg of never ending explosions...

The saddest thing about PPA is its still going to be powerful as hell with half ammo but the VS are already claiming it will be the end of the PPA making it a worthless gun in attempts to stop it.. I'm surprised the devs listen to anything the VS say, they even keep trying to claim the magrider is the worse tank as if being able to hit max speed in seconds, strafe, and bypass walls is a bad ability...

1.) What buff are you talking about? Snipers could always one shot head shot people

As far as i know you couldnt one-shot headshot. The other player always stayed at like a sliver HP after the first shot, with stock rifles vs stock chars without nanoweave at optimal range. The only exception to this could be infiltrators themselves as they have 100 less HP i think.

In fact checking a backup of the weapon spreadsheet confirms this.

Afaik bolt-actions were specifically introduced to reward good aim but at the cost of long refire times and non-hitscan properites.

As far as i know you couldnt one-shot headshot. The other player always stayed at like a sliver HP after the first shot, with stock rifles vs stock chars without nanoweave at optimal range. The only exception to this could be infiltrators themselves as they have 100 less HP i think.

In fact checking a backup of the weapon spreadsheet confirms this.

Afaik bolt-actions were specifically introduced to reward good aim but at the cost of long refire times and non-hitscan properites.

Are you talking during Beta times or something? Because I can remember one shot headhsotting peopel as the NC infil with the stock Bolt Action since Nov 20. O.o